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She’s highly drugged.
Her mind barely processes anything anymore, numb on endless medication they incessantly inject into her hour in and out. What’s left behind are remnants of the last wisps of memories she sees replaying in her head like a timeless loop – horror on their faces, the gushing of blood everywhere on her, the silver of his blade slicing through the still air, the shattering of stars in her vision as something hard and metal pricks through the flesh of her abdomen, and the last of it is the blinding, searing pain that binds her body until she has to shut her eyes and succumb to the darkness that takes her in wholly.
Here – at least she doesn’t feel so much pain. She’s swimming non-stop in swirls of cerulean pools, and she feels lighter. At least she doesn’t have to stare down at her abdomen and see a gaping hole through her flesh, doesn’t have to see so much blood that she doesn’t understand how anyone like herself can bleed so much. Here, at least she’s not in pain anymore, and she’s whole; a complete body, although she’s trudging six feet above everyone else looking down at them like a detached angel with no halo above her head.
Aerith honestly feels like a hovering spirit at this point. She doesn’t know how it happens, but it’s a surreal experience to see her own body looming beneath her, surrounded by IV drips and countless metal gray medical equipment and machinery. Amidst all that life support units, her frail body lies ghostly white. She’s wearing the white hospital gown, and with the sterile pristine hospital walls around her – it’s like she’s a ghost herself.
What a tragedy – how did it turn out like this?
She’s supposed to have died along with his sword, and the world will be the better of it.
Now her friends have gone to save the world, and defeated the silver-haired man, but yet she still remains behind physically present. Undead. As if the Lifestream is willing to leave their last Cetra behind to remind her friends of the pain of not having saved her in time. As if they needed a physical reminder of not having stopped the villain in time from driving his Masamune through her flesh.
Honestly, Aerith prefers herself dead, and returning back to the Lifestream.
Stuck in limbo, she knows her physical presence in this world is only going to cause her friends more pain, as if not giving them either option to completely let go and move on from her death, or embrace her wholly back in their lives completely well and healthy.
Aerith looks down at her frigid body, static from all the drugs they’ve put into her. She wants to laugh. Instead, she’s now no better than the living dead – she’s just comatosed, and the doctors don’t know when she’s going to wake up next. Could be a few days, could be months, could be years… maybe never, we don’t know for sure. The doctors always give her friends the same apologetic looks.
It’s routine now. Sometimes she’ll sit in a corner silently and watch as her friends come and go.
There’s Yuffie, who’s always, always crying and inconsolable. Doesn’t matter how many days or weeks it’s been. She comes in with puffy eyes, and a colorful assortment of Materias in her hands. She’ll sit beside the unmoving body, and sob uncontrollably. She pleads of Aerith taking her back to the Gold Saucer so they can have another go at placing bets at the Chocobo Square. She makes promises of dropping the bad habit to steal Materias, but Aerith’s got to be the one awake to stop her from doing so. Each time before Yuffie leaves the room, she makes sure to put her Materias by Aerith’s pillow.
“Don’t worry, I didn’t steal them,” She’ll reassure the Cetra, her eyes soaking with child-like sorrow like someone who’s lost an older sister, “I worked hard for them so I can give them to you. Kicked monsters’ butts, won them fair and square. Just like I promised you.”
And there are more familiar faces as the days pass and Aerith eventually loses track of time. Time doesn’t mean much anymore when you’re an unconscious figure lying on the bed plugged into every possible technology trying to keep you on life support.
Aerith sees jet black hair and fighter gloves. Tifa doesn’t come by as often; Aerith doesn’t blame her. She knows how hard it is for the fist fighter to meet the Cetra face to face – each time she visits, she ends up no better in a state like Yuffie, and is wrecked by sobs. Tifa spends at most an hour sitting by Aerith’s bedside, and does not say a single word. All she does is take both of Aerith’s cold hands and clasp them in her own. All she does is pray, and pray, and pray.
And when the hour is up, she leaves, as quietly as she comes. Tifa knows if she stays any longer, her heart won’t endure such a sight. She feels as if she’s lost her only sister figure in life, not knowing when she can see her again, and she doesn’t want to go through that.
There’s Barret who always brings Marlene. They bring plush toys, and flowers that Marlene picks up from everywhere around her feet she finds that she knows the flower girl will like.
On days that Marlene visits, Aerith ends up with a flower affixed in her hair.
There are the boys. Vincent comes with Cid and Nanaki all the time. It’s as if the vampire refuses to be alone again in handling the pain. He doesn’t trust himself to face another possible loss on his own after Lucrecia. He doesn’t say it either – but he leans on Cid and Nanaki to support him emotionally on these hospital visits. He speaks not a single word, merely gazes at the flower girl for a few seconds, and is the first one out the door. He feels the same sense of shame and loss all over again, this time for a friend who has always tried her best to understand his pain. Aerith’s the only person who’s reached out to him despite all his efforts to shut people away in a bid to repent his sins.
Each time Cid visits, an unsmoked cigarette lies by Aerith’s pillow.
He’s made a promise before to the flower girl to smoke less. He’s going to keep it.
Nanaki drops by and lights another candle in the room with the flame burning at his tail. Eventually there’s a small exhibit of white small candles in the room where Aerith lies, and the doctors eventually tells Nanaki to stop bringing anymore because there’s not going to be space. Nanaki settles for re-lighting the ones that’ve exhausted their ambers.
Aerith can’t tell Nanaki yet, but she loves the scent of those wax candles. They remind her of hope and the ignition of their well wishes.
And admist all the flurry of these hospital visits from her friends, there’s unfalteringly a presence in her room that doesn’t leave.
It’s always there. And she smells it. The scent of armor and metal and cider mixed into one. She can’t see it, but she can identify who it belongs to. And although she cannot see anything in her subconscious moments, in between the blur of people walking in and out of her room, there’s a permanent warmth that sifts between her fingers; a light weight she feels constantly caressing her hands.
She’s physically blind, but she can smell and sense him.
He never leaves. When everyone else visits, he’s always there. By her bedside. He’s never walked away. Not once.
So he sits. Spikey blonde hair buried in her hospital bedsheets, a hollow look in his eyes as they glaze over sobbing wrecks of Yuffie and Tifa, of the Materias, unsmoked cigarettes and wax candles by her bedside, of the flowers in her hair, and he sees everything.
He’s been watching Aerith every second, for a hundred and twenty days now.
The doctors and nurses recognize him. Sometimes they tell him to take a rest. Go home, Mr. Strife, you’ll need some rest to take care of her again tomorrow.
But he never leaves. So the nurses erect a sofa bed by Aerith’s bed, for his sake. They are tremendously kind souls. The nurses eventually get used to him sleeping over in her room. He’s literally the only visitor in the hospital that has never gone home since a patient’s been admitted.
His hands are permanently clasped around hers. His forehead finds its familiar spot in the edge of her bed. The look of shame, guilt, loss and anguish in his face never falters even after a hundred and twenty days.
But the doctors and nurses understand – the man loves her too much to let her go a second time.
So they let him stay.
The party brings food for him all the time. At first they try to dissuade him, reassure him they’ll take rotating shifts to watch her so he can go home to rest. But he refuses, never budges, and they lose hope gradually. Now they settle for simply ensuring their leader never starves.
Yuffie cooks sausages for him and brings them with her Materias all the time. Tifa and Barret end up always snagging a bottle of champagne from their rebuilt Seventh Heaven bar to present to their leader for a drink when he’s in one of those somber moods again. Vincent appears occasionally with a bottle of good Gin – vampire’s actually got a pretty good sense of humanity. He’s honestly not entirely as unfeeling as everyone makes the vampire out to be – no one misses Vincent giving their leader a small squeeze in the shoulder as a gesture of comfort before he makes his silent exit. Cid never forgets to bring pastries and cookies that his wife Shera bakes. Nanaki often uses his tail to reheat some of the food when their leader’s left them out cold again.
The aftermath of the hole in Aerith’s body has left them all devastated, especially their leader.
But they know they’ll have to stay and back the two of them up no matter how hard and long the days get. They know how badly their leader needs their silent cheerleading in this time, especially when he’s got his heart ripped out in that abominable moment when the sword pierced through her skin, and now he’s left out to dry on his own in hollow waters.
OF course they worry, all the time.
Their leader seldom speaks anymore. They know he blames and loathes himself – for not being there in time to stop the silver-haired man from doing the unthinkable. Some days he refuses to eat. He’s lost weight. Yuffie and Tifa are coerced to force-feed him at times with a spoon right down his throat. Barret sometimes have to physically open his mouth to chug a bottle of water into his system before he passes out of dehydration.
Aerith’s unconscious and comatosed in her physical state, and Cloud Strife’s dead in his soul.
And so a hundred and twenty days expand into a hollow canopy of time that constricts at their throats and hearts mercilessly. Eventually the days on the calendar add up like a train on a never-ending railway, and it’s been three hundred and sixty-five days. The party members celebrate their birthdays within the confines of the hospital walls, with no one speaking very much, but everyone downing their sorrows partaking alcohol, with Aerith motionless on her bed. The only comforting sounds are the beeping of the life support units signifying that they’ve not entirely lost her. That’s reason enough to celebrate.
…Thanksgiving comes and goes. The world is cloaked in puffs of snow as the season turns to winter and Christmas comes and the world outside merry-makes. But the joy is lost upon them. There are no presents, no gifts, no Christmas tree, no sugar cookies, no candy canes – there are only sights and sights of IV drips and life support units and medical equipment and wired tubes and transparent needles. No one can unsee the unforgiving, large hole in Aerith’s abdomen that is long ago stitched, but still barely healing.
They spend Christmas sitting by her bedside.
In the pristine cold night, they find themselves missing their angel unbearably more.
They leave the room before midnight, understanding their leader needs some alone time with her. It’s Christmas Day, after all.
And the days pass, and it’s a brand new year. Winter unfreezes, and the sounds of birds usher in the first days of summer. Thick jackets and furry bean hats and knitted gloves are swapped with colorful dresses, shirts and straw hats.
But inside the hospital room where she lies, seasons are obsolete, rendered meaningless.
Not a single doctor nor nurse ever tells the man who sits by her bedside to move on.
They know, if anything, that a single minuscule shred of hope is all that remains to keep him from falling apart.
Cloud Strife might be made of flesh and bones, but he’s now no different from a skeletal, hollow human who can no longer feel any atom in his being.
“Four hundred and sixty-two days, Aerith,” he speaks to her, or to no one in particular, because it’s never been a reciprocal conversation anyway. His breaths are ragged, his tone quavers. It’s the only way he speaks to her lately. He’s lost all energy and will. “When are you going to wake up?”
He is met with silence. Nothing unusual.
He reaches for her hand and presses it against his cheek, hoping the heat of it will soothe her cold hand.
“You like to keep me waiting, don’t you?” He tenderly caresses her forehead and watches her sleep. She’s been sleeping for so long now. “Well, Aerith, two can play the game.”
His throat is hoarse. He hates trusting himself to speak to her when the lump in his throat betrays him.
“I’ve been patient, Aerith. So patient. What else am I doing wrong?” He pleads to her, his Mako blue eyes beseechingly staring into her soft features, demanding an answer.
The beeping of the life support unit is his only answer.
He sinks his head into the bedsheets. He stops counting the times he’s done that; stop counting his reason to exist outside of her.
He’ll wait.
Even if it’s to infinity, he will wait.
And by the time it’s day five hundred and twenty-one, there are endless wax candles, cigarettes, flowers, Materias, cookies and wine bottles in her hospital room.
Where her world here is cold, she’s surrounded by endless warmth and reminders of a possible home.
Amidst all the familiar faces in and out, she remembers his the most.
Always with her, by her side, often times burying his face in her bedsheets in despair. But his hands never let her go. So she remembers in her painless dreams, of a permanent warmth etched in her heart and soul.
With the warmth that comes, Aerith always wonders about the unmistakable moisture that seeps into her skin.
Cloud, why are you crying?
And if she does open her eyes, she’ll know –
What she doesn’t see, she still feels - the endless tears he’s shed into the skin at the back of her hand.
Five hundred and twenty-one days of unanswered tears,
…and counting.
The machine beeps quicker.
A heartbeat passes.
Startled Mako blue eyes. Faint glimmer of hope in them.
His gaze settles on her.
He feels her fingers twitch in his.
On day seven hundred and thirty-one, Cloud remembers drawing his first breath that doesn’t leave a hole in his heart anymore.
FIN
----- sick Cycle Carousel
If shame had a face
I think it would kind of look like mine
if it had a home would it be my eyes?
would you believe me
if I said I am tired of this?
So when will this end
it goes on and on
over and over and over again
Keep spinning around,
this is a sick cycle
- Lifehouse
A/n:
Wow. I apologize for that depressive fic and leaving it there to end. 😊 I guess it’s up to you how you want to take it from there. But we all know this couple deserves their happy ending, no matter what Square throws at us next.
If you do the math, seven hundred and thirty-one days is approx..2 years. So yep, if you need a quick context.
Comment/review – you know you wanna ; )
Myst-san